The Cold Song

by Linn Ullmann

  WHEN ALMA WAS ten she changed schools. She wasn’t happy in the old one and she wasn’t happy in the new one either; she made no friends and didn’t play with the other children at recess, just sat on her own in a corner of the school yard or locked herself in a bathroom. It wasn’t a problem, she told Jon, she would rather be alone.

  “And anyway, you’re my best friend,” she said solemnly, “you’re the one I want to spend time with.”

  “But I’m your father,” Jon replied. “It’s good to have friends your own age too.”

  “I just want you,” Alma said.

  “How about we invite one of the girls in your class to come home with you one day after school?” He struggled on. “That girl Ingrid, maybe? Or Marie, or—”

  “Papa,” Alma broke in, “do you believe in God?”

  “No,” Jon said. “I don’t. But a lot of people do,” he added. “What about Gina or Hannah? Maybe one of them would like to come home with you after school?”

  “Mama doesn’t believe in God either,” Alma said. “Why don’t either of you believe in God?”

  “I think we believe in people,” Jon replied. “In all that we human beings are capable of doing—for good and ill. We build up and we destroy and we build up again, and I think that every day involves a choice—”

  “I believe in God,” Alma broke in again, wrapping her arms around her father. “I pray to God every day. I pray that you will live a long, long time, because you’re the one I love, and I pray that you won’t get sick and die, even though you’re getting old.”

  “Excuse me!” Jon retorted with a strained little laugh. “I’m not old!”

  These conversations with his daughter left him ill at ease. Why couldn’t she—just once!—talk about the things other ten-year-olds talked about?

  Jon remembered the time he had brought Alma a bag of surprises—that’s what he had called it—different kinds of candy, a pink lip gloss, a DVD about a girl who in fact was a princess. “I have a surprise for you!” he’d cried as he walked in the door. “A bag of surprises.”

  Alma had raced up to him, torn the bag out of his hand, and peeked inside. Her eyes had narrowed when she saw what it contained. Jon looked at her: Oh, my God, she’s going to cry. She pulled out the lip gloss and held it up to him between her thumb and index finger as if it were a dead mouse. By now her plump little face was streaming with tears. She put the lip gloss in the bag again, handed it back to him, and said, “You don’t know me at all, do you!” Then she turned on her heel and ran up the stairs.

  Another day Alma said, “Sometimes God talks to me.”

  “Oh, and what does he say?”

  “He says I have to do things for him, and if I don’t do them you’ll die.”

  “Oh, Alma, no!” Jon straightened up, put down his book, drew his daughter to him, and whispered, “What kinds of things does God tell you to do?”

  “He tells me I have to stay awake all night and not sleep. He says I have to go out in the rain and run around the house a hundred times even though I don’t want to. He says I have to cross the street when the light is red, not green, even if there are cars coming. He says I have to give away my stuffed animals, he says I have to eat mackerel in tomato sauce even though it makes me sick.”

  “Hey, wait a minute, Alma. Your mother and I thought you gave away all your stuffed animals because you didn’t play with them any longer. You said yourself that you were too big for stuffed animals.”

  “I am too big for stuffed animals,” Alma said. “That’s not the point. But I would never have given Flop away if God hadn’t said I had to.”

  “You gave away Flop?”

  “I gave Flop to Knut in my class.”

  “Knut, the boy who was so horrible to you a while back?”

  “Yes, Knut! And he said he was going to pee on Flop and throw him in the garbage, he said he didn’t want anything that my scabby fingers had touched, but I went down on my knees and said he had to take Flop, he could do what he liked, but please, please would he take him.”

  “But Alma, why do you do things like that? Why do you give away … Have you talked to Mama about this?”

  “I don’t talk to Mama. I talk to you.”

  Jon cupped his hands around Alma’s face and forced her to look at him.

  “Why do you give away things you love to people who’re not nice? Did you just say that you went down on your knees?”

  Alma nodded. “If I don’t do what God says,” she whispered, “you’ll die.”

  Neither Siri nor Jon could understand where Alma, at the age of ten, had picked up her hectic faith in God. The school psychologist was called in. Her teachers were alerted. It could be that Alma would bring stuff to school again and try to give it away, or in some other way “put herself in situations that invited fellow students to behave in an offensive manner,” as the school’s principal put it. Various diagnoses and medications were considered for Alma’s sudden faith in God.

  But then Alma stopped bringing her belongings to school to give away, she no longer kneeled down for fellow students who bullied her, and after that Alma was left in peace, and for a while it looked as though things were going to be all right.

  ALMA WHISPERED so that nobody would hear her: “So Milla, what do you do when you go out at night? Do you meet people you know? Other kids your age? Do boys come and see you here at Mailund after everyone’s asleep? Do you fuck them, one after the other?”

  Milla, who stayed in the red-painted annex, had lots of nice clothes and a lot of nice makeup. One evening—this was several days before the party—she washed Alma’s short black hair in the washbasin and blew it dry so that the black cowlick sat nice and flat over her forehead along with the rest of her bangs.

  Milla sprayed the freshly blow-dried hair with lots of hair spray. “To keep the cowlick down,” she said.

  Alma and Milla were in the little bathroom, both of them giggling and huddling together in front of the tiny mirror on the wall, and Milla looked at Alma and said, “You’re fine, you know, Alma, you’re just fine.” Then Milla got out all her cool makeup and asked Alma if she would like to have a makeover.

  Milla went into the bedroom and motioned to Alma to sit down on the bed.

  “This will be your transformation,” she said. “That’s your dream, isn’t it? To go back to school when summer’s over as a totally new person.”

  “Don’t know,” Alma said. “Maybe.”

  When, after about half an hour, Milla was finished, she handed Alma a mirror. Alma squeezed her eyes tight shut and counted to ten. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten. She opened her eyes and looked at herself.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  If she cried, the mascara would run like black rivers down her face.

  Alma liked what Milla had done with her hair, but she didn’t like the makeup. She didn’t want to be a new person, or at least, not if that meant having red lips and orange cheeks. Just being Alma was more than enough for Alma. She didn’t want to be new. She wiped off the lipstick and rubbed her cheeks to get rid of the bronzing powder.

  “Well, at least keep your eyes the way I’ve done them,” Milla said, looking at Alma in the mirror.

  There was a thick layer of gray eye shadow on the lids. Alma thought she looked a litle bit like a raccoon.

  “Don’t rub it all off,” Milla said. “Smoky eyes, that’s what it’s called, that look. It’s nice. It makes you look kind of mysterious.”

  “I don’t know,” Alma said, looking doubtful. “I think there’s too much eye shadow.”

  “No, it looks good,” Milla said. “Makes you look a lot older.”

  Milla lit candles and put on a CD; she used her computer as a CD player. Alma recognized the song.

  “My father has that CD too,” Alma said. “It’s Bob Dylan, right? Papa listens to Bob Dylan all the time. I didn’t think kids your age listened to that sort of music.”

  “O
h, yes,” Milla said vaguely, and smiled. “Or, I don’t know. But I listen to Dylan a lot anyway.”

  And then Milla asked Alma if she would like to dance and Alma did and so they danced. It was a slow song, so they danced slowly and quite close together. Alma laid her head on Milla’s shoulder and Milla held her close.

  “You’re fine, Alma,” Milla said again.

  “You too,” Alma whispered. “I like you so much, Milla.”

  THERE WERE STILL a few hours to go until the party would begin. Alma knocked on Milla’s door. It was afternoon and the mist was threatening to envelop the whole of Mailund, the house itself and the annex and all the tables and tablecloths and flowers in the garden. Milla opened the door and Alma squinted at her.

  “What are you doing?” Alma asked.

  “I’m praying,” Milla said.

  “What?” Alma said, and she blushed. “Like to God?”

  Milla looked serious. She didn’t giggle as she normally did. She was wearing a red dress. One black bra strap was just visible. Sun-kissed shoulders. Long hair hanging down. And something dark and shimmering and freshly tuned that said: Look at this, play on it, savor it.

  A few days earlier Milla, Alma, and Liv had been lying on the grass in the garden, sunbathing. It was one of the few warm, sunny days of that summer. Liv had not exactly lain still, but had quieted down when she was allowed to play with Milla’s phone.

  “Remember to put sunscreen on Liv so she doesn’t get burned,” Siri said as she was leaving for work.

  As she was on her way out, she said, “There’s a salad in the fridge for you.”

  Then: “Please don’t give the children candy. Sugar is poison, okay!”

  Then: “And keep an eye on Liv at all times, Milla. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

  Then: “Don’t go near the lake, under no circumstances are you to go near the lake.”

  “Okay,” Milla said, stretching lazily on the grass.

  The day was hot and Milla had opted for the black polkadot bikini that Liv liked so much. Milla had three bikinis, a red one, a blue one, and the one with black polka dots, and Liv liked the black polka-dot one best. “I want a bikini like that too. Can I have a bikini like Milla’s?”

  “Answer me properly, Milla,” Siri snapped. “Did you hear what I said?”

  Milla was just about to answer when Alma got to her feet.

  “Mama!” she cried. Her voice cut through the heat. It was the kind of day, she might have said, were she to describe it, when everything was white and gummy and warm and still, when everything moved a little more slowly than usual.

  Siri looked at her daughter inquiringly. “What, Alma?”

  Her mother seemed to be a long way off. But she wasn’t. She was standing by the garden gate. They couldn’t have been more than ten paces away from each other. But something had happened to the distance between them. Like in a dream. Siri’s admonitions. Milla stretching lazily on the grass. The black polka-dot bikini. Liv, long-limbed and fair-haired, sitting on the towel on the grass, playing a game on Milla’s phone.

  Alma cried, “Why can’t you just be nice!”

  “You don’t have to yell at me, Alma,” Siri said.

  “But you go on and on at Milla,” Alma persisted. “You really should learn to trust people.”

  Siri opened her mouth to say something, her cheeks were scarlet. She shook her head and closed the gate behind her.

  “We’ll talk about this tomorrow, Alma. Text me if you need anything and remember to put sunscreen on.”

  Her voice and her shadow hung in the heat for a few moments before they evaporated. Alma munched a cookie slowly, Liv stared, mesmerized, at something deep inside Milla’s phone, five minutes could have passed, or five hours, then suddenly Jon was standing there in front of them in the garden, waking them from their dream. He had Leopold with him.

  Liv threw down the phone, ran as fast as she could, and leaped into her father’s arms. Alma and Milla lay where they were on the grass. Jon took a few steps toward them, then stopped and looked down at them.

  “So here are all my girls, soaking up the sun,” he said, smiling.

  Alma looked up at her father. Something about his voice. The slightly false note. The jolliness that wasn’t genuine jolliness, just forced jolliness.

  “A little touch of Saint-Tropez, eh?” he went on.

  Alma tried to catch his eye, so he would see that she was rolling hers. A little touch of Saint-Tropez—please! What was the matter with him? But her father didn’t notice her. He was looking at Milla. Alma followed his gaze and saw how it flicked swiftly over Milla’s body—her feet, her legs, her knees, the polka-dot bikini, her arms, her hair, her eyes—as if Milla’s body were the goddamned solar system. And Alma realized that Milla was letting him do it. That she was lying there perfectly still, letting him do it. This was not a dream. Alma saw it all very clearly. Jon looked at Milla, and Milla let herself be looked at by Jon. It didn’t last very long. Alma noticed how Milla stretched out a little, there, beside her on the grass. Writhed over the heavens like the aurora borealis. And then it was over.

  “Don’t you all look nice,” Jon said. And now he looked at Alma.

  “What are you doing here?” Alma asked. “Don’t you have a book to finish?”

  Jon gave a quick laugh.

  “Thank you, Alma. Yes, I do. But right now Leopold and I are going for a little walk. As long as nobody else can be bothered to walk him, I have to do it, right?”

  He set Liv gently down on the grass between Milla and Alma.

  “Take good care of this little one,” he added, and then looked at Milla in a very different way from before. “Take care, all of you.” He bent down to attach Leopold’s leash and walked off through the gate.

  “Have fun in Saint-Tropez,” Alma shouted after him. She rolled over onto her stomach, so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

  “Your father’s really nice,” Milla said after a few moments.

  “My father’s an idiot,” Alma mumbled.

  And now here was Alma, a few days later, knocking on Milla’s door; there were only a few hours to go until Jenny’s big celebration and Milla had told her she was praying to God.

  “Okay, you can come in,” Milla said. “I have to go over and help your mother later on. But you can stay till I go.”

  Alma pushed the door open.

  Milla sat down on the bed and beckoned to Alma to come and sit beside her. Alma sat down beside her.

  “What do you pray for?” Alma asked.

  “This and that,” said Milla. “But I’m finished now. Do you want me to put on music?”

  Alma shook her head and said, “Do you believe in God?”

  “Yes, I always have.” Milla turned and looked at Alma. “Do you?”

  “I did when I was younger,” Alma said. “But I don’t anymore.” “Why not?”

  “Don’t know,” Alma replied. “I just don’t.”

  “I do,” said Milla. “I think he sees me and watches over me.”

  Alma shrugged.

  “God sees everything,” Milla added. “When I was little my father used to sing to me every night.”

  She opened her mouth and sang in a clear, high voice:

  Jesus bids us shine

  With a pure, clear light.

  Like a little candle

  Burning in the night.

  In this world of darkness

  So let us shine,

  You in your small corner

  And I in mine.

  “What’s your father’s name?” Alma asked.

  “Mikkel,” said Milla.

  “And your mother?”

  “Amanda.”

  “Can I have a glass of water?” Alma asked.

  Milla frowned. “Get it yourself,” she said. “There’s a glass in the bathroom.”

  “Can’t you get it for me?” Alma said. “Please.” She swung her legs up onto the bed and settled herself more comfortably. “I’m so n
ice and comfortable here on your bed. I’ll get water for you some other time, when you’re thirsty.” Alma laughed. “Swear to God, I will,” she said.

  Milla didn’t laugh, didn’t so much as smile, she merely got up and went into the bathroom. Alma heard the tap being turned on.

  Hidden in her hand Alma had a long, fat Iberian slug. It stuck to her palm.

  Alma detached it from her skin and laid it under Milla’s duvet. A thread of slug slime clung to her fingers and she wiped her hand on the sheet. There! The slug drew in on itself and lay very still. Alma straightened the duvet and perched herself on the edge of the bed. When Milla got back tonight she would lay her bare thighs on top of the slug.

  Alma smiled.

  Milla emerged from the bathroom carrying a glass of water. “Here,” she said. Her voice was cold. “Drink this and then you have to go.”

  Alma took the glass and eyed Milla. She had put on makeup and brushed her hair to a long, shining fall.

  Milla said, “Okay, now I have to go help your mother, and then I’ve got other things to do. I don’t have time for you.”

  She gave an impatient flick of her hand and her bracelets jingled.

  “That’s okay,” Alma said. She drank the water. “I’m going now.”

  SIRI WANTED TO throw a big party for her mother. Jenny had said no, but Siri insisted. Of course she would throw her mother a party. Fifty guests, suckling pigs imported from Spain, long trestle tables in the garden, lanterns in the trees, she would not take no for an answer, she could roast the pigs in the big bread oven in her restaurant kitchen.

  “We’ll need five pigs,” Siri said, and picked up her cell phone and called the supplier in Oslo. “And I’ll roast some apples and root vegetables and potatoes. And that’ll be it. We’ll keep it nice and simple. The porch will have to be painted. Everybody will have to pitch in and help. The curtains will need to be taken down and washed. We’ll have to scrub the floors. Where’s the soap? I want the carbolic! This house,” she said, spreading her arms as if to embrace all of Mailund. “We’ll have to fix up the house. And the garden too. A garden party!”

  She turned to Jon.

  “It’ll be a party to remember,” she said. “And Jenny will be very happy. She can’t see that herself right now, but she’ll be so happy. She loves being the center of attention.”